The Jeeves Omnibus (334 page)

‘Torquemada?’

‘The Spanish Inquisition man.’

‘Oh, that Torquemada.’

‘How many Torquemadas did you think there were?’

I admitted that it was not a common name, and she carried on.

‘We must act!’

‘But how?’

‘Or, rather, you must act. You must go to this man and reason with him.’

I h’med a bit at this. I doubted whether a fellow with Bingley’s lust for gold would listen to reason.

‘What shall I say?’

‘You’ll know what to say.’

‘Oh, shall I?’

‘Appeal to his better instincts.’

‘He hasn’t got any.’

‘Now don’t make difficulties, Bertie. That’s your besetting sin, always arguing. You want to help Ginger, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Very well, then.’

When an aunt has set her mind on a thing, it’s no use trying to put in a
nolle prosequi
. I turned to the door.

Half-way there a thought occurred to me. I said:

‘How about Jeeves?’

‘What about him?’

‘We ought to spare his feelings as far as possible. I repeatedly warned him that that club book was high-level explosive and ought not to be in existence. What if it fell into the wrong hands, I said, and he said it couldn’t possibly fall into the wrong hands. And now it has fallen into about the wrongest hands it could have fallen into. I haven’t the heart to say “I told you
so”
and watch him writhe with shame and confusion. You see, up till now Jeeves has always been right. His agony on finding that he has at last made a floater will be frightful. I shouldn’t wonder if he might not swoon. I can’t face him. You’ll have to tell him.’

‘Yes, I’ll do it.’

‘Try to break it gently.’

‘I will. When you were listening outside, did you get this man Bingley’s address?’

‘I got it.’

‘Then off you go.’

So off I went.

11

CONSIDERING HOW SHAKY
was his moral outlook and how marked his tendency to weave low plots at the drop of a hat, you would have expected Bingley’s headquarters to have been one of those sinister underground dens lit by stumps of candles stuck in the mouths of empty beer bottles such as abound, I believe, in places like Whitechapel and Limehouse. But no. Number 5 Ormond Crescent turned out to be quite an expensive-looking joint with a nice little bit of garden in front of it well supplied with geraniums, bird baths and terracotta gnomes, the sort of establishment that might have belonged to a blameless retired Colonel or a saintly stockbroker. Evidently his late uncle hadn’t been just an ordinary small town grocer, weighing out potted meats and raisins to a public that had to watch the pennies, but something on a much more impressive scale. I learned later that he had owned a chain of shops, one of them as far afield as Birmingham, and why the ass had gone and left his money to a chap like Bingley is more than I can tell you, though the probability is that Bingley, before bumping him off with some little-known Asiatic poison, had taken the precaution of forging the will.

On the threshold I paused. I remember in my early days at the private school where I won my Scripture Knowledge prize, Arnold Abney M.A., the headmaster, would sometimes announce that he wished to see Wooster in his study after morning prayers, and I always halted at the study door, a prey to uneasiness and apprehension, not liking the shape of things to come. It was much the same now. I shrank from the impending interview. But whereas in the case of A. Abney my disinclination to get things moving had been due to the fear that the proceedings were going to lead up to six of the best from a cane that stung like an adder, with Bingley it was a natural reluctance to ask a favour of a fellow I couldn’t stand the sight of. I wouldn’t say the Woosters were particularly proud, but we do rather jib at having to grovel to the scum of the earth.

However, it had to be done, and, as I heard Jeeves say once, if it were done, then ’twere well ’twere done quickly. Stiffening the sinews and summoning up the blood, to quote another of his gags, I pressed the bell.

If I had any doubts as to Bingley now being in the chips, the sight of the butler who opened the door would have dispelled them. In assembling his domestic staff, Bingley had done himself proud, sparing no expense. I don’t say his butler was quite in the class of Jeeves’s Uncle Charlie Silversmith, but he came so near it that the breath was taken. And like Uncle Charlie he believed in pomp and ceremony when buttling. I asked him if I could see Mr Bingley, and he said coldly that the master was not receiving.

‘I think he’ll see me. I’m an old friend of his.’

‘I will enquire. Your name, sir?’

‘Mr Wooster.’

He pushed off, to return some moments later to say that Mr Bingley would be glad if I would join him in the library. Speaking in what seemed to me a disapproving voice, as though to suggest that, while he was compelled to carry out the master’s orders however eccentric, he would never have admitted a chap like me if it had been left to him.

‘If you would step this way, sir,’ he said haughtily.

What with one thing and another I had rather got out of touch lately with that If-you-would-step-this-way-sir stuff, and it was in a somewhat rattled frame of mind that I entered the library and found Bingley in an armchair with his feet up on an occasional table. He greeted me cordially enough, but with that touch of the patronizing so noticeable at our two previous meetings.

‘Ah, Wooster, my dear fellow, come in. I told Bastable to tell everyone I was not at home, but of course you’re different. Always glad to see an old pal. And what can I do for you, Wooster?’

I had to say for him that he had made it easy for me to introduce the subject I was anxious to discuss. I was about to get going, when he asked me if I would like a drink. I said No, thanks, and he said in an insufferably smug way that I was probably wise.

‘I often thought, when I was staying with you at Chuffnell Regis, that you drank too much, Wooster. Remember how you burned that cottage down? A sober man wouldn’t have done that. You must have been stewed to the eyebrows, cocky.’

A hot denial trembled on my lips. I mean to say, it’s a bit thick to be chided for burning cottages down by the very chap who put them to the flames. But I restrained myself. The man, I reminded myself, had to be kept in with. If that was how he remembered that night of terror at Chuffnell Regis, it was not for me to destroy his illusions. I refrained from comment, and he asked me if I would like a cigar. When I said I wouldn’t, he nodded like a father pleased with a favourite son.

‘I am glad to see this improvement in you, Wooster. I always thought you smoked too much. Moderation, moderation in all things, that’s the only way. But you were going to tell me why you came here. Just for a chat about old times, was it?’

‘It’s with ref to that book you pinched from the Junior Ganymede.’

He had been drinking a whisky and soda as I spoke, and he drained his glass before replying.

‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word “pinch”,’ he said, looking puff-faced. It was plain that I had given offence. ‘I simply borrowed it because I needed it in my business. They’ll get it back all right.’

‘Mrs McCorkadale told my aunt you tried to sell it to her.’

His annoyance increased. His air was that of a man compelled to listen to a tactless oaf who persisted in saying the wrong thing.

‘Not sell. I would have had a clause in the agreement saying that she was to return it when she had done with it. The idea I had in mind was that she would have photostatic copies made of the pages dealing with young Winship without the book going out of my possession. But the deal didn’t come off. She wouldn’t cooperate. Fortunately I have other markets. It’s the sort of property there’ll be a lot of people bidding for. But why are you so interested, old man? Nothing to do with you, is it?’

‘I’m a pal of Ginger Winship’s.’

‘And I’ve no objection to him myself. Nice enough young fellow he always seemed to me, though the wrong size.’

‘Wrong size?’ I said, not getting this.

‘His shirts didn’t fit me. Not that I hold that against him. These things are all a matter of luck. Don’t run away with the idea that I’m a man with a grievance, trying to get back at him for something he did to me when I was staying at his place. Our relations were very pleasant. I quite liked him, and if it didn’t matter to me one way or the other who won this election,
I’d just as soon he came out on top. But business is business. After studying form I did some pretty heavy betting on McCorkadale, and I’ve got to protect my investments, old man. That’s only common sense, isn’t it?’

He paused, apparently expecting a round of applause for his prudence. When I remained
sotto voce
and the silent tomb, he proceeded.

‘If you want to get along in this world, Wooster old chap, you’ve got to grasp your opportunities. That’s what I do. I examine each situation that crops up, and I ask myself “What is there in this for me? How,” I ask myself, “can I handle this situation so as to do Rupert Bingley a bit of good?”, and it’s not often I don’t find a way. This time I didn’t even have to think. There was young Winship trying to get into Parliament, and here was I standing to win something like a couple of hundred quid if he lost the election, and there was the club book with all the stuff in it which would make it certain he did lose. I recognized it at once as money for jam. The only problem was how to get the book, and I soon solved that. I don’t know if you noticed, that day we met at the Junior Ganymede, that I had a large briefcase with me? And that I said I’d got to see the secretary about something? Well, what I wanted to see him about was borrowing the book. And I wouldn’t have to find some clever way of getting him looking the other way while I did it, because I knew he’d be out to lunch. So I popped in, popped the book in the briefcase and popped off. Nobody saw me go in. Nobody saw me come out. The whole operation was like taking candy from a kid.’

There are some stories which fill the man of sensibility with horror, repugnance, abhorrence and disgust. I don’t mean anecdotes like the one Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright told me at the Drones, I am referring to loathsome revelations such as the bit of autobiography to which I had just been listening. To say that I felt as if the Wooster soul had been spattered with mud by a passing car would not be putting it at all too strongly. I also felt that nothing was to be gained by continuing this distasteful interview. I had had some idea of going into the possibility of Aunt Agatha reading the contents of the club book and touching on the doom, desolation and despair which must inevitably be my portion if she did, but I saw that it would be fruitless or bootless. The man was without something and pity … ruth, would it be? I know it begins with r … and would simply have
given
me the horse’s laugh. I was now quite certain that he had murdered his uncle and forged the will. Such a performance to such a man would have been mere routine.

I turned, accordingly, to the door, but before I got there he stopped me, wanting to know if when coming to stay with Aunt Dahlia I had brought Reggie Jeeves with me. I said I had, and he said he would like to see old Reggie again.

‘What a cough drop!’ he said mirthfully. The word was strange to me, but weighing it and deciding that it was intended to be a compliment and a tribute to his many gifts, I agreed that Jeeves was in the deepest and truest sense a cough drop.

‘Tell Bastable as you go out that if Reggie calls to send him up. But nobody else.’

‘Right ho.’

‘Good man, Bastable. He places my bets for me. Which reminds me. Have you done as I advised and put a bit on Ma McCorkadale for the Market Snodsbury stakes? No? Do it without fail, Wooster old man. You’ll never regret it. It’ll be like finding money in the street.’

I wasn’t feeling any too good as I drove away. I have described my heart-bowed-down-ness on approaching the Arnold Abney study door after morning prayers in the days when I was
in statu pupillari
, as the expression is, and I was equally apprehensive now as I faced the prospect of telling the old ancestor of my failure to deliver the goods in the matter of Bingley. I didn’t suppose that she would give me six of the best, as A. Abney was so prone to do, but she would certainly not hesitate to let me know she was displeased. Aunts as a class are like Napoleon, if it was Napoleon; they expect their orders to be carried out without a hitch and don’t listen to excuses.

Nor was I mistaken. After lunching at a pub in order to postpone the meeting as long as possible, I returned to the old homestead and made my report, and was unfortunate enough to make it while she was engaged in reading a Rex Stout – in the hard cover, not a paperback. When she threw this at me with the accurate aim which years of practice have given her, its sharp edge took me on the tip of the nose, making me blink not a little.

‘I might have known you would mess the whole thing up,’ she boomed.

‘Not my fault, aged relative,’ I said. ‘I did my best. Than which,’ I added, ‘no man can do more.’

I thought I had her there, but I was wrong. It was the sort of line which can generally be counted on to soothe the savage breast, but this time it laid an egg. She snorted. Her snorts are not the sniffing snorts snorted by Ma McCorkadale, they resemble more an explosion in the larger type of ammunition dump and send strong men rocking back on their heels as if struck by lightning.

‘How do you mean you did your best? You don’t seem to me to have done anything. Did you threaten to have him arrested?’

‘No, I didn’t do that.’

‘Did you grasp him by the throat and shake him like a rat?’

I admitted that that had not occurred to me.

‘In other words, you did absolutely nothing,’ she said, and thinking it over I had to own that she was perfectly right. It’s funny how one doesn’t notice these things at the time. It was only now that I realized that I had let Bingley do all the talking, self offering practically nil in the way of a come-back. I could hardly have made less of a contribution to our conversation if I had been the deaf adder I mentioned earlier.